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Monday, September 19, 2016

It's about time

It is done! It took longer than I expected, being interrupted by a vacation certainly did not help, but I have finished Odin Sphere. I even got the worst possible ending, was not satisfied, and did the final level a second time (with online help) to get the correct one.

What is wrong with me.

I am not going to spoil the ending as the story in Odin Sphere, how the fates of five people intertwine as the apocalypse approaches, really is one of the highlights of the game. It would be unkind for me to share how it goes. However I will say that Oswald gets a happy ending that I do not believe he deserves.

There is a bit of analysis to finish regarding what each character loses and what they do about it. To recap, Gwendolyn lost her honor and chose love, Cornelius lost his humanity and chose courage, Mercedes lost her mother and chose to lead her people and Oswald lost his balls and did nothing about it. This leaves Velvet.

Velvet lost her innocence. She and her brother Ingway are the only two human survivors of the Valentine kingdom, the rest having been turned to pookas when the cauldron exploded. Her grandfather strangled her mother after discovering that Velvet and Ingway's father was Odin. Later he returns from the dead to finish his plans. So yeah, she has a lot going on and she doesn't always deal with it well.

The first time that her grandfather (well, his rotting corpse) appears to her she is visibly shaken. In a game full of excellent animation, the subtle way she shudders, loses confidence, and eventually bows out of fear, trumps everything. She didn't need to say anything - the way she looked and moved explained how she felt. This was her challenge, to defeat the man who had stolen her innocence.

Odin Sphere was a good game this time around. Much better than the last time I played it and I chalk that up to the combat being much more interesting and there being no slow down for any of the bosses. Amazing what just under a decade of technical advancement can do.

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This blog, in its present form, is a way to force me to not game away all my free time every day in the only way I know how: talk about it instead. Also, I play a lot of crap; read about it here so you don't have to. And if the complaining starts to get out of hand, leave anonymous, hateful comments.